One Exercise to Kickstart Your Self-Discovery Journey
“Until you make peace with who you are, you’ll never be content with what you have.”
Did you know you are letting others dictate your life? You are letting others fill in the gaps and giving your power away to other people. This is simply because if you’re not practicing self-discovery yet and digging deep then you don’t know yourself. If you don’t know yourself, how can you accept yourself? If you can’t accept yourself you’ll fill the hole by seeking for others approval and figuring out who you are through their eyes.
I’m not saying this is a one and done journey. You’ll never be done discovering yourself as it’s a lifelong process so it stands to reason you’ll never fully “know thyself”. But so many people avoid this work point blank afraid that they won’t like what they see. Consequently, a void forms where nothing really satisfies you. It all just feels like a chore because you’re not doing what makes YOU feel happy and lit up rather you’re following the trends of society surrounding you – telling you what will make you happy. How about we change things up, hmm?
So How Do You Practice Self-Discovery?
Look inwards for answers rather than outwards. Stop prowling the depths of the internet looking for how to feel or think a certain way as the answer is digging deep, peeling the layers of thoughts, feelings, and beliefs within your mind and figuring out how they came to be there in the first place, where they came from, and if they’re true. Can you prove them wrong?
As this post is more about beginning your self-discovery journey, let’s start there. There’s a lot of nuance involved so bear with me.
The Exercise
Note:
Before you begin, put away your phone and any technology (maybe read this post first so you know the exercise though). You want to be in a more or less neutral flowy state. You can do this by going for a walk, meditating, playing with your dog, drawing, reading, anything that’ll make you relax
- Take Out a Pen and Paper (You don’t have a phone for this exercise after all)
- Write Your Story – Birth to Current
- How would you write your narrative if your knew others were going to see if? What would you highlight and showcase?
- Write down everything that you remember that made you who you are today – the struggles, achievemants, any and all of your experiences as these all made you who you are today
- Take your time with this
3. Play Detective
- Lenses to Try
- Celebrator – Notice, acknowledge, and celebrate the challenges you’ve overcome. The things you’re proud of, have achieved, or just plain reasons you can find in the story to love yourself “flaws” and all.
- Optimist – See what you can learn from the “negative” experiences. You can’t change the experiences themselves as they’re in the past, but you can always reframe the angle at which you view the experience, taking away new perspectives and lessons that will help you in the future. This’ll help you put the memory of the experience to rest.
- Empathizer (or sympathetic friend) – Notice the traits you disliked about yourself and disidentified with because of societal pressures unconsciously. These traits make up your shadow self. Examples include aggressiveness, selfishness, neediness, or whatever traits you’ve been told wasn’t acceptable growing up. These traits don’t define you, however they’re still a part of who you are. The more you keep these suppressed the more it’ll show up in your behavior unconsciously in worse (explosive) ways than if you just owned them. Additionally, nothing is black and white. These traits you might’ve been told were unacceptable have positive qualities (say ambition and ability to stick with your goals or stand up for yourself and other people) that may be holding you back from the person you want to be. So own ALL of who you are, not just the characteristics a group of people said was acceptable. Who says their words are true and that it was actually best to disown those parts of you? What would a friend say to ease your concerns?
- Investigator – Notice any patterns in terms of what you might value. What seems to drive your actions? Your desire for connection? Your sense of what’s right and wrong? There will be clues throughout your story as to what is important to you. When you stick to these values in your everyday life you’ll find you already feel like a better person.
- Lenses to Try
Final Thoughts
This exercise is an opportunity to go inwards and reflect; get out of the mind of collective society and into your own heart. Sometimes it’s hard to see how far you’ve come and to put everything in your life in perspective. This exercise gives you the chance to do just that. When we let others dictate how our lives should go we give up our power and feel miserable in the end. This is your life. Keep writing your story in the way that YOU want it written. You are the writer (and editor) of your story, not your thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, and certainly not what others tell you that you “should” be.